What a bunch of babies... dealing with protests by first cutting off people's ability to communicate, then when people get annoyed by THAT, they just shut stations completely?
Then again this is an organization that looks out for its own and is not comfortable being questioned.. so not too surprising.

dealing with protests by first cutting off people's ability to communicate, then when people get annoyed by THAT, they just shut stations completely?

Eh, I can't blame them for closing stations, considering that the stations they closed had protestors on the tracks, blocking trains from leaving. Which was a pretty stupid way to protest anyway since you're just going to piss off the other commuters, people who could have been on your side. Now all they'll remember is how those stupid protestors screwed made them late for work or late getting home (bearing in mind that they were already disrupting service).

Pix or it didn't happen. I have seen video of police closing doors and generally impeding the flow of the crowd, and of the media with bulky cameras and lights crowding out a train car, but no protesters on the tracks (wouldn't they tend to bump into the 3rd rail?) blocking trains.

It seems from what I can see anyway, more likely the stations were closed so the inconvenience could be blamed on protesters.

Here in Atlanta, someone blocking the door of the MARTA train is a daily occurrence (protest or not) and we somehow manage not to shut the station down when it happens. So far, I've heard a lot of claims, but the only pix was a youtube video for a different day showing a non-event. At the rate we're going, I fully expect it to be blamed on a crying infant in a backpack next (But we swear, it was crying in protest).

If the other people you talked to believe the story that it was the protester's fault, it just

Given the events of last night and how BART has historically been run, I suspect that much of BART's motivation was to make the protestors look as bad as possible. Towards the end of the evening, while BART was tweeting that all stations were open, they were actually keeping the stations closed. There were lots of commuters angry and frustrated that they had been walking back and forth between two stations trying to catch a train... but nobody seemed to bat an eye at the fact that BART was the one giving

Which was a pretty stupid way to protest anyway since you're just going to piss off the other commuters, people who could have been on your side.

I don't know about that. Few details have been released, but what we do know is that the guy had a knife and was acting really stupidly. If you're going to start a protest because you're certain that the cops murdered an innocent man, based on THAT evidence, you probably have a lot of free time and aren't going to work.

They aren't protesting this incident except as an excuse to protest against past behavior. Most of the anger being displayed would probably be better directed at the killing of Oscar Grant where an unarmed and restrained man was shot at point blank range (presumably due to the officer unintentionally drawing his gun when he meant to draw his taser). Having another seemingly similar incident occur involving the BART police force is just fanning the flames that were started years ago.

You're absolutely correct: now people will remember the protest. They might be pissed off, but they'll know there was a protest, and there's a good chance they'll find out what the protest was about. It's a hell of a lot more effective than handing out pamphlets, or putting a card in BART's suggestion box.

And this is why protesting the US never made it past the "I want to be heard!" stage in the 70s. Active protesters in the US don't even see their goal as changing anything, they see their goal as protesting.

Protesting doesn't actually accomplish anything productive. It is a means to an end. That end never comes if you don't effectively convey your actual message to people in a way that asks them to consider if they agree.

In other words, I am not saying you are wrong, I am saying you are missing the point. If your goal is to protest, then by all means, your logic is sound. If your goal is to change something, your logic may be sound or unsound. It is entirely up to the people receiving the message if your logic is sound. If you are comfortable leaving it up to them, then fine. But keep in mind that it you, the protester, who has the message that is trying to be disseminated. You are the one with the passion and the information. You must accept that it is then your responsibility to communicate that in a way that others can effectively receive.

Protesting for the sake of protesting hasn't been effective at any kind of institutional or long-term change for decades. Why people continue to think it is productive is beyond me. If you are truly passionate about your message, actually go out on a limb and put in real effort. Any idiot with a sign can protest, but not any protester can be a Gandhi. You have to choose to commit yourself to your goal to do that, and speaking frankly, most protesters (like most people in general) are not willing to invest that much of themselves in committing to something that doesn't directly benefit them.

The protests against Vietnam did little to end the war there. As long as it was some long haired weirdos doing the protesting the powers that be didn't pay attention. Things didn't really start to change until the middle class started to get involved and objecting to the war. I'm not sure if the early protesters actually affected the middle class, or if the middle class had just grown weary of the same old pointless fight displayed on the news night after night.

Not that easy, you might want to read up on history.While you are toot, toot, chugga, chugga, the protester is lying down sure that you will stop.And it's no win for BART. The catch enough hell if some jumps in front of a train at the last minute. Accidental killing a protester? they would be screwed, even if they weren't' at fault.

They lesson here is: only build systems with powered rails~

" What is the primary purpose of BART? "To serve the peoples transportation need; which includes cell phones and data c

They decided it was unsafe to allow the operation of the trains. The intent of the protesters was to disrupt service and this is what they accomplished. The platforms were extremely crowded, reports were that some protesters kept train doors from closing, and when one station was shut down protesters marched to the next one. Given the history of recent protests tjhat had protesters climbing on top of trains it is not unreasonable to assume that there was a safety issue here.

First off, I do not believe it was in BART's policy to shoot people. Whatever the reason here, there were protests against these killings in the past up until relatively recent. This current protest had nothing whatsoever to do with this shooting. The protest was about cell phone service disruption only.

Second, this cell phone disconnection was apparently not a part of BART policy either and a BART boardmember said that they did not know about it in advance and that it was not in their policy. Given the

If I has been in charge of BART this weekend (and I was up in the Bay Area during this) I would have shut the whole courtesy BART cell phone repeater system down and told the EFF and the ACLU to take a flying f'ing leap into the bay. There is NOTHING in the Constitution about freedom of speech that says that you have to assist demonstrators in shutting down your system. BART exists to move people efficiently in a city with too many cars, too much pollution, and never enough parking. The demonstrators are a bunch of loonies who want to be part of an Anonymous based action and have no right to even be on BART's private property for that purpose. If BART directors actually had a spine that wasn't broken down by too much bending down to Political Correctness they wouldn't have these issues. This is something to be sorted out in the courts, not on the streets - unless you really want to become Egypt. Personally, I don't.

The BART cell phone repeater system has only been in place for a few years as a courtesy to riders. There are still emergency phones in stations (along with employees who have access to land lines) and the train conductors have the ability to call for assistance as well. People have built systems for calling for help in emergencies for decades before cell phones existed.

No, the trains still have communication. Only the cell phones wouldn't work. Cell phones are not the only communication mechanism in existence, and people have had medical emergencies on BART before the cell phone repeaters were installed. The train operator has communication with BART offices at all times. In fact you can not just rely on cell phones anyway, you still have to tell the operator so that the train can stop at the next station.

But how far can this logic take us? Let's just shut off water and electricity to the properties of people we don't like. Nothing in the constitution that says they have a right to be able to purchase those services. IMO at some point, conveniences become widespread enough that we start to rely on them, and the providers of that service can then exact control over us by restricting or controlling this service, which previous to our reliance might not have mattered so much.

I get what you're saying and I agree to an extent, but consider that water and electricity provide for basic human biological needs - thirst, hygiene, and need for warmth. Perhaps cell phone access does not fit in that group as perfectly as we may wish.

I would have shut the whole courtesy BART cell phone repeater system down and told the EFF and the ACLU to take a flying f'ing leap into the bay. There is NOTHING in the Constitution about freedom of speech that says that you have to assist demonstrators in shutting down your system.

Were any of their arguments actually based around the constitutionality of that act? Because otherwise, that has nothing to do with the protests. Something not being barred by the constitution is a terrible standard for whether something is justified or not.

"There is NOTHING in the Constitution about freedom of speech that says that you have to assist demonstrators in shutting down your system."

Actually, it's the FCC that has full legal authority regarding cell phone service (and pretty much all wireless communication methods), and its intentional disruption or jamming, and how NO ONE is supposed to be legally allowed to do it. You know why movie theaters can't install cell phone jammers to keep phones in the audience from ringing? The FCC makes it illegal to

Why are people presenting the false dilemma of having either no cellular service or station/service interruptions?

"Protesters" have zero right to vandalize websites or physical property, steal personally identifying information, or cause service disruptions. They should expect to be caught when CCTV and cell records are subpoenaed & should look forward to felony conspiracy charges.

These demonstrators were doubly stupid because they alienated people who agreed with them. The transit union and mayor cam

There is NOTHING in the Constitution about freedom of speech that says that you have to assist demonstrators in shutting down your system.

Merely that pesky First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech") as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment (See Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925)) and a host of Supreme Court precedent stating that prior restraints to speech must serve a compelling governmental interest, be narrowly tailored to achieve that goal or interest, and be the least restrictive means for achieving that interest.

Cell phones make it easier to assembly a large mass of people at any given location, because of instance communication (calls, texting, and internet).

That's a guess, but I think that was probably what they were thinking.

More than that. The demonstration leaders had announced their intention of organizing the crowd in the most effective manner for their own purposes during the first demonstration by using cell phones, twitter, and texting ahead of time. I don't think that they had anticipated this response from BART.

Actually we don't know the reason. We don't know who turned off the phones. It wasn't sanctioned by the BART board of directors and it's not a part of the policy. The board however doesn't do day-to-day operations.

I lived in the San Francisco area and commuted by BART in the late '90s/early '00s, when cell phones were first becoming omnipresent among the tech crowd. On my train ride back from SF to Berkeley there were two brief periods where trains came above ground, which were marked by everyone whipping out their phones and breathlessly relaying status updates to those they were meetings. I remember thinking, "Jeez, I hope they don't put cell reception in the tunnels, this will just be insufferable." Looks like I

It seems so. first, their acts have become something to be afraid of from the respect of private interests, with all these leakages.

Second, their endless leaking sensitive data will make data so trivial that, there wont be any reason to hide most of what we deem sensitive today. This would remove some issues we are meeting in regard to security - like SSN numbers or similar crap being taken as proof of identity (what a stupid thought) and this leading to fraud and so on. If, it was accepted that there wa

I'm not saying I agree with either side, but I have to say BART's strategy is clever. They're making regular citizens angry at the protesters that make them wait for hours to be able to go home by forcing the closure of the main 4 stations in San Francisco, hence hurting their cause.

San Francisco has a lot of crazies, and sorting out the harmless ones from the dangerous ones is hard. Here's one case. [sfappeal.com] A guy in a wheelchair was slashing the tires of city vehicles with a rock. He was apparently shot by cops with a beanbag gun, and he and one cop were taken to a hospital with non-lethal injuries. There's video from someone across the street. [youtube.com] Excessive force? Perhaps, but subduing someone with a sharp object without getting cut is very tough.

If you really think this was about safety, terrorism, or the limited set constitutional rights that BART officially recognizes, then you're dumber than your idiotic posts already reveal.

I think that the person you just outed is yourself. It is completely about both safety, and the rights of people who just want to get from Point A to Point B to not be made part of your demonstration against their will. Those people have rights too.

Interesting but annoying.From the news stories I read the person shot was said to be armed with a knife and one of the officers involved was treated for cuts. Is that not true? What is your source? In fact there is a video of him throwing a knife at the officer. A drunk throwing bottles and knives at officers in a train station where their are other passengers seems like a real threat to me. The bottle stuck to officer and the Officer fired on the man after he threw the bottle and was coming at him with a knife.http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/bay-area/2011/07/bart-shooting-video-shows-thrown-knife-not-threat-man-posed [sfexaminer.com]Frankly that data points to the officers reaction being reasonable IMHO. It isn't proof but there does seem to be some data that points in that direction and very little that points to this being an unjustified shooting.Second where does someones rights end? Why do the protesters rights to free speech matter more than peoples rights to use public transit? The protesters set out to shut down the stations. They have every right to protest outside the stations but once they interfere with people using the station they are violating others rights.

I do not see what there is to protest about. It almost seems like vigilantly justice towards the police.

Justified killing is still "violent police action". And justification is up for each and everyone to decide for himself.

Personally w.r.t. BART police killings, I think protests were in order for the Oscar Grant manslaughter (officer tried, convicted, served time), but probably not for the knife guy, even though the video clearly shows the cops shooting *after* the knife was already gone (no longer an actual threat)...

The police report says the man had 2 knives and a broken bottle. 1 knife and 1 bottle had been thrown and the man was advancing towards them with the second knife in hand when they put three shots into his chest.

What isn't clear from the report or the video available:

How far away the guy was when they resorted to lethal force, could be considered important considering at least one of the officers was armed with a taser.Where bystanders are in relation to the threat, was a man with a knife a bigger threat t

Second where does someones rights end? Why do the protesters rights to free speech matter more than peoples rights to use public transit?

Because the right to free speech is enumerated in the Bill Of Rights whereas public transit is not. Public transit is a locally provided service that is a convenience, one that many have come to rely on in large metropolitan areas like the Bay Area, but a convenience nonetheless. It is _NOT_ a right.

Did you not read the headline of the story you linked? "Bart shooting video shows thrown knife, but not threat man posed."

BART police arrive on the platform in response to a call of a man being too drunk to stand. Within 30 seconds of arriving on the platform, they had shot the man to death -- apparently, for being drunk and mouthing off to police.

Apparently the man was belligerent, apparently he had a weapon, and he threw the weapon at them. What did the officers think he was -- a circus knife-thrower? Was he planning to pin the officers to the wall with knives, maybe? He was apparently too drunk to walk straight, so maybe he was planning to do that with his hand over one eye?

But hold on -- according to the story you linked, the man wasn't considered a threat because he threw a knife at police. He threw a bottle. I'd hardly call that a threat to the officers' lives. They say the bottle cut them. Well, show me the hospital report or boo fucking hoo.

But let's say he did throw a knife. Is that when you decide you have no recourse but to shoot a guy -- after he's thrown away his weapon? If he'd just tossed it down on the ground, presumably they would have still screamed "he's got a knife!!" and shot him?

But no -- the truth is, according to the very story you linked, the suspect didn't even throw the knife until after the officer shot him. If a belligerent police officer came out of nowhere and started shooting at you -- remember, police had arrived on the platform less than 30 seconds ago -- might not you also try to to defend yourself?

How did any of this happen? Did the officer not have time to say "halt"? Or "drop your weapon"? The drunk man, who was reported as being too drunk to stand and too drunk to walk straight, was such a threat to the officers' lives that even though they were armed and wearing body armor, as soon as they him, they realized they had just 24 seconds to shoot him dead?

And perhaps the most pertinent question: Why did they choose their firearms instead of their tasers? When Johannes Mehserle murdered Oscar Grant by shooting him in the back while Grant was face down on the ground and handcuffed, Mehserle's excuse was that he mistook his firearm for his taser. Many, many law enforcement experts came forward to say that this was highly unlikely, as officers are required to keep their taser and their handgun on opposite sides of their bodies. Mistaking the two would be tantamount to mistaking your own left hand for your right. Now this other officer chooses to draw his handgun and use lethal force on an inebriated suspect, while his taser sits in his holster, unused. That's an interesting coincidence, don't you think?

I've always thought it was interesting, too, that BART police officers seem to carry 2-3 extra magazines on their belts when patrolling trains. Just how many shots do they expect to have to get off on an occupied train or inside a subway platform, anyway? 45?

Might it not be that BART police training encourages officers to use their firearms as the first line of defense? And that BART needs to answer to this pattern of behavior by its police force? But that it chooses not to answer, because its police force is not answerable to any city's mayor or city council, and in fact is answerable to no organization but BART itself? And therefore the public's only real recourse is civic unrest?

Apparently the man was belligerent, apparently he had a weapon, and he threw the weapon at them. What did the officers think he was -- a circus knife-thrower? Was he planning to pin the officers to the wall with knives, maybe? He was apparently too drunk to walk straight, so maybe he was planning to do that with his hand over one eye?

That would be a lot of thinkin for a person to be doing in a split second while a knife is flying at them. And it's worth noting that there were people behind the officer in that video that might have been hit with a knife. Risk own life and others on assumption that crazed drunken bum doesn't have another knife and won't get lucky, or shoot? My first instinct would probably be to shoot too.

You make an excellent point about training though. First move should be to their tasers. Cops have a duty to

That would be a lot of thinkin for a person to be doing in a split second while a knife is flying at them

I hear you, but you missed one point: The knife was not flying at them. The officer shot the guy first, then he threw the knife.

If you read other accounts, there was some other Keystone Cops type stuff, where the guy threw the bottle, liquid spilled out of the bottle, and one of the officers slipped on the liquid and fell on his ass. That was when the second officer drew his weapon and reportedly fired two seconds later. If you read between the lines, it sounds like a pair of poorly trained, less-than-compe

Aw, maybe you have to live in the Bay Area. I see guys who look like that every day. He looks pretty desperate, if you ask me. Our streets are crawling with crazy drunks, addicts, homeless, and the mentally ill. I'm sure the guy was acting pretty erratically, but if you read reports, nobody on the platform ever felt particularly endangered. It's an everyday thing out here.

More to the point, though: Would I personally want to try to detain this man and physically restrain him? Hell no. I'd leave that to trai

"Aw, maybe you have to live in the Bay Area. I see guys who look like that every day. He looks pretty desperate, if you ask me. Our streets are crawling with crazy drunks, addicts, homeless, and the mentally ill."And you do not find an armed crazy drunk, addict, or mentally ill person worthy of concern? I would say that you have an under developed sense of self preservation.

And you do not find an armed crazy drunk, addict, or mentally ill person worthy of concern? I would say that you have an under developed sense of self preservation.

I probably wouldn't know he was armed. For all I know, they're all armed. Until the cops showed up, this guy's only crime was being drunk. I don't find that worthy of concern, no. It was the cops' job to do something about it, though, and they did it in a way that escalated almost immediately to fatal violence.

First line of defense?The officer was already hit by a bottle? You don't think that being hit by a bottle isn't life threatening? Ask someone to shit you with a bottle sometime. These are not movie props.There where innocent people in that station including a child. Yes I know was throw

Second where does someones rights end? Why do the protesters rights to free speech matter more than peoples rights to use public transit? The protesters set out to shut down the stations. They have every right to protest outside the stations but once they interfere with people using the station they are violating others rights.

The police would be well within their rights to arrest people found to be breaking a law. However, they're not allowed to prevent people from assembling or exercising their free-speech rights, even if they suspect that these will lead to crimes being committed in the future.

I have no question that the drunk threw a bottle, and perhaps a knife. It may have even cut an officer. They had every right to get physical with him and to arrest him. Summary execution was not, however, a reasonable response.

Lethal force is really only justifiable where there is a genuine threat to life that cannot be mitigated through retreat. For example, they could have backed off and come back in body armor. Or they could have backed off and turned a firehose on him. Or tasered him. Or thrown their cl

Wow what about the other people at the station? Really? That isn't summary execution. This guy threw a bottle at an officer and then pulled a knife! Taser maybe but did the office that shot have a taser or was the one hit by the bottle have the tazer. Did you even watch the video I linked too?A guy throwing a bottle at you and then pulling a knife in a station with innocent people is far from saying Boo.

They had tazers. Nobody was in any way concerned about anything until the cops inflamed the situation. None of the passengers seemed at all frightened until the cop drew his weapon. You're not at all concerned about bullets hitting bystanders?

I did watch the video and see no reason anyone but a craven coward would actually fear for their life there. (at least until the cop started shooting, endangering pretty much everyone present).

And no, that's not really much more than saying Boo when the guy is wobbly d

It's more like this:The objective of the BART group is to run the trains, safely and on schedule.A train station is a dangerous place during a protest. Protests, being large relatively immobile crowds have the possibility of pushing people into places where they shouldn't be. Between an enclosed space causing crush problems, the electrical lines for the trains, and the trains themselves, I wouldn't want to be in a train station during a protest.

> large relatively immobile crowds have the possibility of pushing people into places where they shouldn't be. Between an enclosed space causing crush problems, the electrical lines for the trains, and the trains themselves

I'm afraid that you have your strawmen mixed up, producing a strange hybrid of the 'liberal elitist hipster either sponging off his parents or in possession of a job that lets him look down on Real Americans' and the 'coddled welfare negroid who knows only gangsta rap and animalistic violence', possibly with a touch of 'one of the tiny remnants of what could be described as genuinely radical leftists, venturing out of his anarco-syndicalist squat somewhere'...

The BART is a slow rail system for the San Fransisco Bay area, with it's very own police force that has a history of abuse, corruption, and at least arguably, murder. This has begun pissing people off so they protested by disrupting service on the BART lines, people in charge of BART decided to hamper the protestors communication by cutting power to BART owned cell repeaters in the tunnels; areas serviced directly by the cell providers' towers were unaffected. This action, not surprisingly, pissed off a g

Two years ago BART PD shot and killed an unarmed, handcuffed man on the platform[1] of the West Oakland BART Station. White cop, black detainee. It California, if not the rest of the US, it's extremely rare for on-duty police officers to be charged with felonies surrounding shooting deaths. The police officer was tried, and convicted of involuntary manslaughter with a "gun enhancement". The judge threw out the "gun enhancement" and sentenced the police officer to the minimum amount of jail time required by law.

Two months ago BART PD shot and killed a man on the platform of Civic Center BART Station[2]. This time the deceased was a white man. BART PD alleged that he was drunk, aggressive, had a knife, and had already thrown a bottle at one of the police officers. BART has released security video of the situation which, unfortunately, doesn't seem to clarify much[3]. Witnesses at the scene claim that the man was not acting aggressively[3,4], and that the man's actions did not warrant the use of lethal force. There is, apparently, some dispute as to whether the man had a knife in the first place.

Last week, there were rumours swirling around about protests scheduled for Thursday regarding this latest shooting. In response, BART preemptively shut down their cell phone repeaters in the San Francisco portion of the subway[5]. This raised the ire of Anonymous[6], who obtained and subsequently released user information (names, addresses, passwords, telephone numbers) from BART's myBART.org site[7,8].

That's about as succinct as I can make the current tensions surrounding BART PD.

Meanwhile on the streets of San Francisco:

In January, SFPD shot an aggressive, knife wielding, wheelchair equipped man in the leg[9]. He was shot with a beanbag gun and subsequently dropped his knife. Allegedly the act of dropping his knife was considered further aggression, so SFPD shot him with a gun. He survived and is now suing the city[10].

In July, SFPD shot a man running away from SF MUNI fare inspectors. Allegedly he shot at SFPD, and police officers returned fire[11]. He died. People protested[12]. The latest twist is that the deceased in this case accidentally inflicted the lethal wound upon himself[13].

So, yes, there's a lot of tension in the BART system and in San Francisco right about now.

Add to the mix that there's a general sense of BART dragging their feet in releasing footage and being less than transparent and, yeah, people get more pissed. Throw in a side of pimping a child and allegedly murdering a pregnant woman, and yeah, some people feel very strongly that the latest SFPD shooting was justified. And, yeah, there's there's a lot of tension both between the public and the police as well as within the general community at large.

You'd be surprised. Most of the people trying to get home had no idea what was going on. Embarcadero Station is the northernmost San Francisco station in the BART line. It's also the most heavily used, and in the heart of downtown SF. Nobody freaking knew. Civic Center station is near Union Square, the heart of tourist country. Most of the tourists didn't know what was going on either.

Despite comments from the peanut gallery on sfgate.com indicating otherwise, my experience was that the people who kne

BART (short for Bay Area Rapid Transit) is the mass transit system for San Francisco and surrounding cities -- think of it as like the Subway in New York, or the Underground in London, or the Mass Transit improvement you build in Civ to restore the one one city health penalty you lost when you made that coal plant.

A group of people decided to protest the BART security shooting a drunk guy who was trying to attack them with a knife. BART, which runs repeater cell stations so that

"They made us choose between people's ability to use their mobile phones (and) their constitutional right to get from point A to point B."
-- quote from BART...
It's lawyerin' time.

Well, maybe not. I'd guess that the reason they decided to leave the cell towers alive during later protests is that some lawyers already talked to them. The standard scenario to bring up in a case of cell-tower shutdowns is: What if there's a medical emergence such as a heart attack or stroke, people pull out their phones to call 911, can't get service, and the victim dies? As soon as people learn that you shut down the local cell phone system intentionally, they'll fire suit against you before the st

Actually, the right to free speech in this case would be #14 (Federal) or #2 (Constitution of California). Parts of the bill of rights have been incorporated via Amendment #14.In any case, you're right, there's no constitutional right to use the subway, though SCOTUS has recognized a right to interstate travel, and one could argue that blocking access that blocking access to interstate travel might be held to violate that right.

Article I of the Constitution of California enumerates protected rights, oddly i

About 2% of my cell phone usage is talking, the rest is web browsing and texting, neither of which make any noise. I don't think I'm that unusual of a cell phone user in that respect. Also, people who talk to other people on the train can be loud even when not on the phone. As a person who spends about 1 hour a day on subways and feel it would be nice if more of the major urban train systems in this supposedly first-world country had cell or even wi-fi access. I think we can survive the occasional loud call

Actually, I have. And while it's nice to be able to watch Youtube, listen to Google Music and read Slashdot on the train, I'd frankly rather have the peace and quiet. One shouldn't be SO ADDICTED to technology that one cannot go an hour twice a day without it.

Maybe because it has become part of a critical service ? ie call 911 ?

It's easy enough to find thousands of discussions of just this scenario, by googling the obvious key phrases. But I haven't actually found any clear evidence that courts have dealt with this in a coherent fashion. The obvious reasoning would be that, before we had cell phones, a medical emergency that led to a death would just be an "Act of God", but once we had technology to prevent the death, intentionally blocking a 911 call would become negligent homicide or something similar. But the question arise